Kristal claims the title of world's oldest man at the age of 112 years and 178 days, and was awarded his certificate at his home in Haifa, Israel on Friday.

“I don’t know the secret for long life. I believe that everything is determined from above and we shall never know the reasons why,"

“I don’t know the secret for long life. I believe that everything is determined from above and we shall never know the reasons why," Kristal said of his longevity, according to a post from Guinness World Records. "There have been smarter, stronger and better looking men then me who are no longer alive."

According to Guinness World Records, Kristal was born near the town of Zarnow, Poland, on September 15, 1903. In the 1920's, he married and moved to Łódź in Poland to work in the family business making candy.

But the Nazi invasion of Poland and the occupation of Łódź in 1939 upended his life. Kristal was moved into the Łódź ghetto with his wife and two children in 1939.

Four years later, Kristal and his wife were sent to the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. Kristal lost his wife, Chaja Feige Frucht, and their two children in the Holocaust.

Kristal just barely survived, performing labour in Auschwitz and other concentration camps, before being rescued by Allied troops in May 1945 weighing just 80 pounds.

He was the only person in his large family to survive the Holocaust.

Kristal eventually remarried and emigrated in 1950 to Israeli city of Haifa in Israel with his second wife and their son.

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